Lightroom 4 Presets – "The 300" Look (updated)

Hey everyone. I know I’ve been a big slacker on the blog lately. Been traveling like crazy teaching my Lightroom 4 Live seminars so it’s been hard to keep up. Today, I’m in San Francisco and it’s looking like a great crowd of over 400 will be there. As always, my invite stands – if you’re coming to the seminar please come on up and say hi at some point. It’s great to see the faces behind the blog.

On to the presets. Here’s another oldie but goodie that I updated to work better with Lightroom 4. The actual effect was inspired by a movie that’s a few years old. It’s called “The 300″. So the preset isn’t new, but I still see the style of this preset used all the time. It’s a very edgy tinted kinda look. You’ll notice there are 2 presets in the zip file. One of them is for a harsher stronger look (good if you’re looking for that gritty effect). The other one is for a softer look (better for portraits that have women in them). Hope you enjoy!

Matt is the Vice President of Photography for onOne Software and a Tampa-based photographer. He's a best selling author of over 20 books and teaches Lightroom and Photoshop at seminars and conferences around the world.

The presets look great! I’m trying to locate the article that was done in the Magazine. I created my own preset from those instructions, with a few changes. As will happen, lost the preset in a lost Mac. Can you please help me find the issue it was in. Thanks Matt.

Just wondering if you have run into any issues with re-opening that processed HDR file back into Photoshop from Lightroom once you have made your adjustments.

I have followed your video step by step – Merged to HDR – saved as 32-Bit Tiff back into Lightroom & applied adjustments – and am now trying to Edit a Copy with Lightroom Adjustments in Photoshop. No matter how many times I select that command, or restart Lightroom/Photoshop, the file does not open. Similarly, selecting Edit Original does not open the file either. Weird! It seems my pretty HDR is trapped in Lightroom! Just thought I’d bring this to your attention in case you, or others, have encoubtered the same issue.

For anyone who has not seen a Matt K seminar, you don’t know what you are missing. And one other thing: Matt is sincere when he says to come up to the stage and say HI. The first time I met him, I was pleasantly surprised at how approachable he was. He also took the time to personalize an inscription to one of his books that I brought up for a colleague who was unable to attend. So if you ever gt a chance, go see Matt live. It will be well worth the time. See you soon Matt!!!

I am glad for your updating some of classics for LR4. I really like that you are noting on the file name that they are for LR4 since I save all presets in folders and this help to tell which is for which version. Thanks Matt

Hi Matt. Great job your doing over here! One thing, on my mchine (mac, lion, lr 4.1), when I use one of these presets, its making some other presets I select have the brownish tint you’ve used, the HDR lr4 presets you’ve posted for example.

Yes… seriously! I added it because they, well, look better on portraits that have women in them (weddings, family portraits etc…). Crazy huh? That an effect or retouching could actually work better on a specific gender for a specific look. But please, you’re free to make the women in your photos look as rough as you’d like. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it

HERMOINE – BTW – IS THAT NAME MALE OR FEMALE? IF YOU ARE NOT HAPPY WITH HIS GENEROSITY IN SHARING THESE FOR “FREE”………… WHY DON’T YOU GO PURCHASE THEM SOMEWHERE……….. GEESH – YOU JUST CANT PLEASE SOME PEOPLE – EVEN BITCH ABOUT FREE STUFF!!!